


This snake

by FridaysAt9



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, scully's tattoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22773922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FridaysAt9/pseuds/FridaysAt9
Summary: Mulder ponders Scully's tattoo, beating himself up about all the ways he has let her down.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Kudos: 26





	This snake

**Author's Note:**

> Was thinking about how the tattoo never turns up again in the show and how it's there throughout. You can easily forget that Scully has that tattoo since it was handled more as a one off and move on plot point. So I decided to write it a moment. Somewhere in season 7 I guess.

His finger traced slow circles, first clockwise for a few turns, then changing direction to counter. Two circles to the right, two or three slow circles to the left. 

She let out a contented sigh as he continued his tracing of the snake on her lower back. Red, white. Red, white. He hopscotched his fingers from blue band, to blue band. He was compelled to skip over the snake’s sharp fangs, but it was more concerned with its own tail than Mulder’s fingers. 

What had she been thinking when she chose this tattoo? He would never have considered her the type to get any tattoo, let alone an angry looking snake, riddled in symbolism and myth. Knowing her the way he did now, more intimately than he had that night when she entered a tattoo parlor with a man she had just met, he could imagine her getting a tattoo in a secret location. Something small and feminine, yet seductive by its placement. He could imagine a small heart or a dark bird maybe, hidden on her hip. Or her pelvis. Somewhere no one would see it, unless she wanted them too. 

But why this snake? And why on a place that would be visible if she wore a bathing suit, which she rarely did or more likely if her shirt pulled up and away from her waist. 

He tried not to think about the fact that the snake would forever remain on the place where his hand often found itself as they walked together. This snake was not about him, or maybe it was, but mostly it was about her. She didn’t like to talk about it and he knew so little about what was going on inside her head on that night, but he had resolved to file it away as a mystery of Scully that could only be solved when she was ready to share the details. 

He continued his path along the snake, tail to head, head to tail. She lay there on her stomach, arms and head on his pillow, firey hair splayed out around her blocking most of her face from view. Of all the marks on her body that he was responsible for, the bullet scar on her stomach that he wasn’t there to prevent, the small scar on the back of her neck that had changed everything, the small white lines on her face from fights and attacks that could only be seen when she removed her makeup, this mark was the one that bothered him the most. Though he would never tell her, this snake kept him up at night. This snake made his imagination fly to all the things that could have happened. To the dangerous situation she had put herself in. To the man she had been with when she had been so angry with him. To the way he had treated her when she came back to work, battered and shaken. 

This snake, eating its own tail, yelled at him that he had let her down, she had turned to someone else. It was a permanent reminder that he didn’t always understand her, when he felt like she was the only one who understood him. It drove him crazy if he let himself think about it. 

He stopped his circles, covering the snake with his palm, and let out a sigh. Scully turned her head to face him. She was beautiful and sleepy, but her eyes were piercing as always. 

“He wasn’t you Mulder,” she said. “I wanted him to be, but he wasn’t.”

She took his hand that had been rubbing her back. “Come here,” she said, pulling him towards her into an embrace, their legs intertwined. “It’s ok. We’re ok.”

He nodded, ducked his head to bury his face in her neck, and closed his eyes.


End file.
